Yesterday Jet’s copy of my manuscript arrived in the mail from Chicago. It was packaged with a very nice note explaining her edits and she even included an old magazine article about understanding distortion as it relates to record listening. What a doll, she is! I’ve flipped through the fifty-something pages and there are an immense amount of grammatical corrections that she relayed to me, as well as some word choice/sentence structure corrections and general ideas about how to better the writing. I called her from the car last night and I assured her that I was not intimidated or depressed by the amount of edits she wrote. I’ve never claimed to be a grammarian, so I’m actually happy her suggestions are so in-depth because when I go through the manuscript to make changes it’ll be a learning experience. If anything, I’m angry over the fact that my years of schooling didn’t pay more attention to grammar. On the plus side, she really enjoys my writing and told me to continue to worry more about the ideas and the style and the content then the technicalities. All in all, things are in good shape over here. I’m anxious to keep writing, but with all the added work I’ve been doing for my mother it’s impeded on my ability to sit down and spend time writing.
Went to JC last night, to Ilya’s apartment. I thought we might try to record “Song for Lubbock, Texas” but instead he wanted to hear some of the country tunes I’ve composed. We played the same song three or four times and it started to sound really good. It was only between 2:30 and 3 minutes so it’s easily the most up-tempo thing we’ve recorded. We gave up recording it after laying down a basic track so I don’t have an mp3 to post here today. Then I played drums and Ilya switched to guitar. When I grew tired of this, I sat down in the corner with a microphone and started free-forming words to chord progressions Ilya was coming up with on the spot. Song titles included: “Alone in the Corner,” “Doctor,” “Racecar Driver” (both of which were off the made-up album Songs About Jobs), “Punk Rock Song,” “Emo Song,” “Drug Song” and “Upbeat Pop Song” (from the album Songs About Songs).
My favorite was “Emo Song,” where I brilliantly came up with lyrical gems like: “I’m emotional / I keep a journal / My name is Connor / I read a lot of books / And I’ve got a feeling” and “Emo song/ Throw a minor chord in the middle / To add some extra weight / And sing like I might break down and cry at any moment.” It was a laugh riot. I hope Ilya didn’t delete it.
Then Nat came over, we killed a few bottles of wine and read some of Jack’s crazy books about what different birthdays mean and historical conspiracy theories. We talked about going to see the Glen Branca thing at MSU tonight but I think it got nixed because, as Nat expertly pointed it, “it’s paying $25 to hear 100 guitars that will probably sound like 1 guitar with lots of reverb on it.”
